Performance Evaluation of RPL Objective Functions

Recently, IETF standardised a powerful and flexible Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL). It selects the ideal routes from a source to a destination node based on certain metrics injected into the Objective Function (OF). In this study, the performance of RPL has been investigated in terms of two OFs (i.e. Minimum Rank with Hysteresis Objective Function (MRHOF) and Objective Function Zero (OF0)) in various topologies (grid, random) which makes this work distinctive. To study the RPL OFs performance, various parameters are considered Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), Power Consumption and RX. The evaluation has been conducted based on these parameters (RX, topology) and compared for both OFs. The simulation results revealed that these parameters have a great impact on the PDR and achieved saved energy levels in the given networks. Our results have also indicated that the performance of RPL within light density networks for MRHOF can provide a better RPL behavior that OF0 could not provide.